See Tagore for disambiguation
Bharat Mata by Abanindranath
Abanindranath Tagore (Bengali: অবণীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর)
(August 7, 1871 - December
51951), was the principal artist of the Bengal
school and the first major exponent of swadeshi values in Indian art.[1] He was also a noted writer.
Tagore sought to modernize Moghul and Rajput traditions
in order to counter the influence of Western models of art, as taught in Art Schools
under the British Raj. Such was the success of Tagore's work that it was eventually accepted
and promoted as a national Indian style within British art institutions.
Life
Tagore was a member of the distinguished Tagore family, and a nephew of the poet
Rabindranath Tagore. His grandfather and his elder brother Gaganendranath Tagore were also artists. Tagore learned art when studying at Sanskrit college in the 1880s. In 1889 he married Srimati Suhasini Devi, daughter of Bhujagendra Bhusan
Chatterjee, a descendant of Prasanna Coomar Tagore. At this time he left the
Sanskrit College after nine years of study and studied English as a special student at St. Xavier's College, which he attended for about a year and a half.
In the early 1890s several illustrations were published in Sadhana magazine, and in Chitrangada, and other works by
Rabindranath Tagore. He also illustrated his own books. About the year 1897 he took lessons from the Vice-Principal of the
Calcutta Government School of Art, studying in the traditional European academic manner,
learning the full range of techniques, but with a particular interest in watercolour. At this time he began to come under the
influence of Mughal art, making a number of works based on the life of Krishna in a
Mughal-influenced style. After meeting E.B. Havell, Tagore worked with him to
revitalise and redefine art teaching at the Calcutta School of art, a project also supported by his brother Gaganendranath, who
set up the Indian Society of Oriental Art.
The publication of Rabanindrath Tagore's Gitanjali in English brought the Tagore family
international renown, which helped to make Abanindranath's artistic projects better known in the west.
Art
Tagore believed that Western art was "materialistic" in character, and that India needed to return to its own traditions in
order to recover spiritual values. Despite its Indocentric nationalism, this view was
already commonplace within British art of the time, stemming from the ideas of the Pre-Raphaelites. Tagore's work also shows the influence of Whistler's Aestheticism. Partly for this reason many British arts administrators were sympathetic
to such ideas, especially as Hindu philosophy was becoming increasingly influential in the West
following the spread of the Theosophy movement. Tagore believed that Indian traditions could
be adapted to express these new values, and to promote a progressive Indian national culture.
With the success of Tagore's ideas, he came into contact with other Asian artists whose
work was comparable to his own. In his later work, he began to incorporate elements of Chinese and Japanese calligraphic traditions into his art, seeking to construct a model for a modern pan-Asian artistic tradition which would merge the common aspects of Eastern spiritual and artistic
culture.
Tagore had a direct influence on Jamini Roy from the 1920s
onward.[2]
References
- ^ Abanindranath Tagore, A Survey of the Master’s Life and Work by Mukul Dey, reprinted
from "Abanindra Number," The Visva-Bharati Quarterly, May – Oct. 1942.
- ^ "The First But Forgotten Exhibition" [of Jamini Roy] by Satyasri
Ukil, reprinted from 'Art & Deal', May-June, 2000: http://www.chitralekha.org/jamini.htm
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